Social media users claim the German government has admitted there was no COVID-19 pandemic.
This is false. The government of Germany has made no such admission. The claim comes from a website known for publishing disinformation and fabricated clickbait news stories.
The claim appears in several Facebook posts (examples here, here, here, here and here), with many linking to an April 2 article and video from The People’s Voice.
The article’s headline reads: “German Gov’t Admits There Was No Pandemic”.
“Huge news out of Germany as the federal government have been forced to admit that so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ were right about everything during the Covid pandemic,” the article states.
“In fact, according to the German government data, there was no pandemic at all, just a tightly choreographed military grade psy-op to brainwash the masses into accepting an experimental vaccine with disastrous consequences.”
The article bases its claims on a tranche of released documents from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), a German government agency responsible for public health and disease control.
The documents outline the protocol behind the risk assessment for COVID-19 in mid-March 2020.
Included in the tranche of documents are minutes from the RKI COVID crisis team’s meetings.
Critics of the country’s pandemic response, including retired economist Stefan Homburg, claim the RKI documents reveal the designation of COVID-19 as high risk was a “political decision” and “not derived by data”.
Therefore, he claims the pandemic “was all fraud“.
RKI responded, stating that while the minutes reflect the discussions at the time, the discussions were based on evidence and data sets, including the daily and weekly COVID reports.
“Therefore, the protocols must always be seen and interpreted in their context,” the RKI said (translated from German).
The RKI also said that at the time the decision was made, the World Health Organisation (WHO) had just declared a global pandemic (March 11) and cases were on the rise in Germany.
When asked if it was true the German government had since declared the pandemic a fraud, the RKI pointed AAP FactCheck to its COVID-19 webpage.
The page gives a detailed overview of the pandemic in Germany.
German television news service Tagesschau has also debunked the claim that the risk assessment upgrade was politically motivated.
The responsibility for declaring a pandemic rests with the WHO.
Australian government advice explains the WHO makes the decision “by monitoring outbreaks of a disease and taking advice from international health experts”.
The People’s Voice article also features an X post supposedly from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, stating: “Covid was a psy-op to test compliance with mRNA and lockdowns. There was no pandemic.”
The post is fake.
AAP FactCheck has debunked many claims from The People’s Voice – examples here, here, here and here.
The Verdict
The claim that the German government has announced there was no pandemic is false.
The claim is based on a fabricated article from a disinformation website. The WHO has the responsibility for declaring a pandemic. The German government has never disputed the classification.
False – The claim is inaccurate.
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